Tampa — In the Temple of Hoop that he has raised at Connecticut, Geno Auriemma reigns with ridicule: warm-hearted perhaps but needle-tipped criticism intended, in the end, to inspire.

"I kind of like to kick the tires once in a while and fool around with the car," the coach described it.

AP (ENLARGE)

Maya Moore is leading UConn in scoring as a freshman this season.

With Maya Moore, he has ripped her rebounding or an early habit of losing her feet in practice. Just Saturday, he called her out for still dribbling with her head down. But he has known for months, this is senseless. In Moore, he admits that he has met his match.

"She just smiles and nods her head," Auriemma said. "And it bothers me because I'm thinking: This kid is so smart. In the back of her head, she's thinking, this idiot actually thinks he has anything to do with what I'm going to do."

"You're supposed to get an argument. She won't argue with you. ... I can't stand her."

Thus on the eve of tonight's women's Final Four did Moore claim another in a long, long line of freshman triumphs. In helping to deliver the Huskies to the NCAA semifinals for the first time in four years, she did so while neutralizing the big Italian guy with the big mouth.

"I just play," she said, fighting a smile. "If I'm going to say something, I'm going to say it with my game. Some of the times, the things he says are true."

So does the Disney-like film that is Maya Moore's first year of college basketball play on, the sweet 6-footer from Lawrenceville fulfilling prophecy upon prophecy. She wanted to make the All-America team in her first season and get UConn back to the Final Four, which she has done with a style and manner uncommon to freshmen.

The No. 1-ranked Huskies face Stanford at 7 p.m. Whatever happens after that will in a large sense involve Moore, not yet a year removed from Collins Hill High School. Yet, she sounds as if she has been here all her life.

"Winning isn't just when the game comes," she said. "It's kind of a personality trait. If you have it, it's something you do all the time, even off the court. It's a mind-set, whether it's something you do in practice or how you treat people.

"You do it enough, you get the right situation or the right opportunity, you're going to win."

Ranking top freshmen

Has there ever been a freshman such as Moore? The passing 36 years of women's championship play and how the women's game has developed invite arbitrary judgment. But surely Moore belongs in that conversation.

Barely five months since first donning a UConn uniform, she leads the nation's top team in scoring (17.8 points per game) and is its best 3-point shooter (42.9 percent). She also ranks second in rebounding (7.6 per game), steals (56) and third in blocked shots (61).

She is the second freshman in history to earn a spot on the Associated Press' All-America first team (after Tennessee's Courtney Paris) and the first freshman of either gender to be named Big East Player of the Year. She also might be even better than that, given her joyful style of play and poise.

"People say if you take her points away, they'd still win because they have so many other players," Pittsburgh coach Agnus Berenato, former coach at Georgia Tech, said. "I'm not so sure. Even when she doesn't score 30 or 35 points, I don't know about that."

Berenato's team faced Moore twice this winter and even broke her streak of 31 straight games scoring in double figures, thanks to off-the-ball pressure defense by 6-footer Xenia Stewart in the conference tournament. The Huskies still won by 27. Moore didn't flinch.

"With everything she's done and all she's accomplished, she didn't care about that," Berenato said. "With her, it's all about her team."

Freshmen get lost on campus. Freshmen carry seniors' luggage. They do not carry their teams. A breakdown of past winners of the Wade Trophy (which Saturday went to Tennessee's Candace Parker) and the Naismith Award — the two foremost tributes in the women's game — reveals few freshman seasons like Moore's.

Carol Blakejowski, the first true women's star, was only a part-time starter her freshman season in 1974-75 at Montclair State. The great Nancy Lieberman scored 20.9 points a game as a freshman for Old Dominion in 1979-80 but couldn't get the Lions past the first round of the old AIAW regional playoffs. Her star rose highest when 6-foot-8 Anne Donovan arrived two years later and ODU won the national title.

Pam Kelly was Louisiana Tech's top scorer and rebounder as a freshman when the Bulldogs were AIAW runners-up in 1978-79. When freshman Janice Lawrence enrolled two years later, that Tech team went 34-0.

But it was Cheryl Miller who really caught the nation's eye during her 1982-83 freshman season, averaging 20.4 points and 9.7 rebounds (with 115 assists) to lead Southern Cal to the NCAA championship, scoring 27 in the final while beating Louisiana Tech.

It should come as no surprise who she is watching this weekend.

"Maya Moore has great poise for a youngster, is extremely athletic and can have an impact on the court at either end, which is a rarity," Miller, a TNT NBA reporter, wrote via email. "She also has a high basketball IQ. She's one of the main reasons why I'm watching the women's tournament. She makes it very enjoyable to watch."

Called upon, answering

Miller did not have one of Moore's luxuries — playing with a team stocked with eight McDonald's All-Americans. But neither did USC have to reconfigure itself at midseason, as UConn did following season-ending knee injuries to wing Kalana Green and No. 2 guard Mel Thomas, both of them starters.

Auriemma's playing rotation has since shrunk to seven players, and Moore, who settled into Green's spot 29 games ago, has led UConn in scoring 11 times with 89 assists. Even when Rutgers held Moore to seven points in the East Region final, Moore sparked a 14-point comeback with five steals and canned the 3-pointer that gave the Huskies the lead for keeps with less than three minutes left.

"She reminds me a lot of Tamika [Catchings of Tennessee], except she has a better outside game," Vols coach Pat Summitt said. "But she plays so hard. She truly is one of the best freshmen I've seen in the women's game."

But the very best? The next 72 hours may tell, even as her coach tries as he might to undo her game.

"I just keep going," Auriemma said. "I'm waiting for a reaction."

Someone ought to tell him, he already has it.